Distorted Reality – Dream the new beginning.

What a horrible day for news!

• There have been several, enormous, co-ordinated bombing and mortar attacks in Baghdad.  It looks like terrorist groups are reorganising themselves there now and it seems that they believe killing on an enormous, indiscriminate scale is the only way for them to be heard.
• Violence is gaining pace in Kabul ahead of the elections in Afghanistan tomorrow.  Again, offered the chance to use the democratic voice that the West believes is the answer to life’s ills, some people prefer the opportunity to mutilate men, women and children on a large, indiscriminate level.
• An independent review has stated that the murder of Brandon Muir, a 23-month-old boy in Dundee, couldn’t have been predicted.  Brandon was left alone with his mum’s boyfriend, Robert Cunningham, who hit him so hard that four of his ribs were broken and his intestines burst.  Brandon’s mum was involved in heroine misuse and prostitution – something that’s being used by the media to redirect the blame from her son’s murderer back onto her.

Sometimes, when I drive home from work and hear all this stuff, things just seem so hopeless.  I must admit that the child abuse stories have a particularly strong effect on me.

Recently, when the Baby P case was in the media and the sentencing of his murderers was carried out, the story of his murderer raping a two year old girl was also reported.  Apparently, the young rape victim was able to give evidence for the court to convict the man.  I was really moved by the knowledge that this little girl was strong enough to do such a thing – this really is an incredible feat of bravery, something that most adults who have been through similar things aren’t capable of.

What struck me today, as the news reporter tried to find somewhere to place blame for Brandon’s death (social workers? other professionals? his mother?) was that, other than the obvious need to punish and rehabilitate his murderer, no specific group can be labelled with blame.  Sure, maybe his mum should have chosen better boyfriends or not left her boy alone in the care of a dangerous man; maybe social workers should be more ready to remove children from the care of people who are dependent on intravenous drugs; maybe the government should offer the social care sector more support to enable them to tackle to huge amount of cases coming their way; maybe the media should stop demonising social workers, so there would be more people willing to take the strain and enter the profession.  But I think the reason for Brandon’s death, for the murder and abuse of kids, is far bigger than all these ideas.

Because why would an adult be violent towards a child?  Usually because the adult is feeling angry for some reason and responds with violence, or perhaps they have sadistic feelings and direct them at the child.  Why would an adult treat a child sexually?  It’s just a way for the adult to deal with their own feelings and gain some pleasure.  Why would a person decided to blow themselves up and take a few others with them, injuring several others?  Because they feel that people won’t listen otherwise and this might gain them some kudos.

It’s all just about the self.  It’s all about me.  It’s what I feel.  It’s how I’ve decided to deal with this emotion.  Sure, the child was in immense pain for the final couple of days of his prematurely ended life, but at least his killer felt that rush of adrenaline that made him feel better for a second or two.  OK, so mothers and fathers will lose their children and children will lose their parents, but at least the bomber made their point and felt special as they exploded themselves.  The politician on the radio this morning appeared to be slightly upset by the interviewer’s rudeness, but the interviewer had the satisfaction of knowing he had made most of his listeners smile, so it was worth it.  So I caused pain, but I felt good about it, which makes it alright.

The fact that child abuse happens has very little to do with social workers.  It has everything to do with the fact that, for some reason, we are convinced that our desires are there to be indulged.  As soon as our desires, our feelings or what we perceive as our needs gain importance, the rest of humanity loses some significance.

I know it’s a ridiculously simple idea.  It’s laughable really.  And it feels like a total cliché to bring this up, but isn’t a good idea to live in the knowledge that I am not the centre of the universe.  What I do will effect others and it is worth bearing that in mind.  Whenever I choose to buy coffee that tastes like liquid gold, but was produced unfairly, I place my desires above the humanity of others.  Whenever a child is mistreated, their humanity is being disregarded for the benefit of their abuser.

This little golden rule sums it up far more succinctly than I ever will:

Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you.

It’s really hard and, although I try to do it everyday, I think I fail more than I succeed.  But it’s well worth the effort.

I feel thankful for my current job.  I’ve previously had some problems with work because I’ve had sustained periods of illness.  Because I was depressed, the environment where I was working (with kids who were in the sort of social situations that would cause the greatest optimist to despair) eventually caused more problems for me because my recovery was being slowed by my work.  Now I have a job that has the potential to bore me to tears, but I have a really sound team around me; a few really sound, genuine people.

While I’m really pleased that I have this role, especially in the current job market, where any role is hard to find, I want to think long term on this stuff and work out where I should be heading for my future career path.  Wow – that sounds really official for me, doesn’t it?  But you know what I mean – where is it that I’m ‘meant’ to be?

I’ve always been a little cautious of using the word ‘calling’ to speak about the occupation that God has in mind for me – this is mostly because the word sounds so religious, which feels wrong because work is such an everyday thing and the use of ‘religious language’ seems to be an attempt to sanctify this most secular of subjects.  But ‘calling’ also seems wrong because I think that my ‘calling from God’ has more to do with my relationship with him, the way I act as a husband and relate to my wife and the way I father my sons than anything else.

Still, I’ve come once again to that point where I’m questioning where God wants me to head with my career.  I’m at an absolute loose end and have come to a point where I could happily go on to try any number of different career directions, from feature writing in magazines to being a live-in carer at a children’s home in a developing country, from beginning a teacher training scheme to gaining a contract for my novel.  I’ve even had conversations recently with friends where I got excited about ordination in the CofE!  There are some very obvious obstacles to most of these (apart from that fact that I’m not a member of a CofE church, the lack of novel offer is closely related to the slow speed of my writing and publicising, teaching is a questionable idea due to my lack of organisational skill and, in general, the fact that the right job advert is immensely hard to find) but I think my greatest struggle is knowing where I should be heading.

The fact is that I am profoundly bad at that spiritual discipline of listening.  I try to practice silence with God, I (to quote the mighty Bono) ‘cease to speak, that [he] may speak’, but I so often fill that silence with the unstoppable prattle that fills my brain.  I know listening takes practice, but the same flightiness that makes me interested in so many options for my future career path makes my practising anything very difficult.

Perhaps I need to practice practice.

I’ve always had this aversion for middle of the road, middle class, middling Christianity.  I decided when I was a kid that I didn’t want to simply do the same thing as every other middle class Brit, but with added church.  I wanted to see a purpose in my daily grind – work for the purpose of the Kingdom of God.  More recently, as well as seeing the limitations of my point of view in my younger years, I’ve also been aware that I could easily fall into a life where I work for the cash, then go to church on Sunday and pray with other Christians about the daily stress of work and cash.

I guess that’s what I was thinking about when I gave this site its name: seeing that the everyday, the bits between the highs in life, the times when your nose is to the grindstone – these are not the bits where it’s just me and my situation.  There is more than this.  There is more for Christian life than where we fit prayer into our busy daily schedule.  The highs I experienced at the Christian events I attended as a kid were never the reason for it all – they were just the Gretna Green service station on the long car journey between the Highlands and the south coast of England.

But we already know this stuff.  The hard bit isn’t recognising that there is distortion in how I see and live my life, the hard bit is seeing how things should be when the distortion is gone.

What I really want to know is not just where God wants me to be, but when I get there, will I live differently in any way to the other people around me.  Because – while I do try to show there’s something more to life as I add data to databases and file papers – all I really have is the hope that the Holy Spirit might do something special without me noticing!

I realise this post is rambling.  It’s not really going anywhere.  But this is something I’m throwing around my own mind at the moment.  I think it’s time for me to ‘cease to speak’ now anyway.